Top Web Design Trends that will Reign Supreme in 2018

New Year is a great time to make a fresh start and to make resolutions as well as an action plan to stick with the same. Shifting our focus to the web design space, it is also the right time to ponder which trends will dominate, as we have already begun 2018.

We can foresee that this year is going to be exciting as well as innovative. Here’s what a web design and development company must keep an eye on in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Leverage diversity and inclusion for

creativity

Thinking out of the box is an imperative to keep ahead of the game and gain competitive advantage. This is solely possible when you have a diverse team rather than a homogeneous team.

Creativity is all about seeing things in different ways! And this is possible only if you have people from different backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. If your team has people from same country and same age then they won’t be able to explore multiple solutions from varied angles for the same problem. They would rather tend to bring the same ideas and solutions to the table.

Hence, in 2018 we would get to see a more diverse and inclusive design team to come out with more innovative and experimental designs.

Focus on understanding target audience

It has always been very important for businesses to understand the end user; however not every business is putting the same amount of effort to conduct user research or interviews in order to fully understand their target audience. We have observed this trend last year too and expect it to ubiquitous in 2018.

You can learn a lot by talking to the target audience – you can find out their pain points and also know what interests them more and so on.

Videos and fluid shapes with gradients

will rule

This year get ready to see the increased use of videos throughout websites as they can deliver lot of information rapidly and visually. Rather than witnessing a typical video in the home page, expect to see them in multiple areas of websites. Videos are not fast becoming a media of brands’ communication and presentation.

Last year, you would have seen generous use of material kinds of shapes and shadows. But this year web design agencies are shifting towards utilizing fluid shapes with gradients. In addition to that lots of white space will be used with large but mild shadows.

Over-sized typography, animated CSS, use of gradients and fluid shapes will become common practice; keeping an eye on the latest UI trends would be beneficial for your web development investment.

Establishing consistency

As a designer you can play a pivotal role in helping businesses maintain consistency in branding which in turn can help increase customer loyalty. For instance, a business must put efforts in maintaining consistency across all the channels, like mobile app and social media for instance.

To you it might appear that a mobile app and social media platforms are different things, however both the channels are facing customers hence need to maintain the same brand message. You must consider the same tone for the company message, uniformity in the language and visuals used so that the branding message resonates bold and loud.

Long-form content with immersive

multimedia

This year long-form content will rule, however, if you are thinking to just throw a long text onto the web page then we are afraid you won’t go far. Rather you have to focus on the concept of feature stories, that is, combine custom layouts with content copy in such a manner that your lengthy stories are enriched with images, charts, graphs, maps, video and other immersive multimedia.

This is not a new trend, to be frank; however, it could be called a milestone of the years long discussion around content publishing in web. Keeping in mind all the tools available for web publishing, we think this trend would get optimal emphasis in 2018.

Brutalism becomes mainstream

Last year you must have witnessed the rise of brutalism despite the fact that this design style is very harsh. Designers can do whatever they want rather than what they should do. The design work usually abstains from the best practices and all the optimization tips at times to create a shocking look.

To your surprise, you can expect more businesses to jump on the brutal bandwagon this year.

Brutalism is a back-to-basics style which is derived from the French phrase for raw or raw concrete. You can take inspiration from the architecture of the concrete era of 1950s to 70s – immovable grey buildings comprising of harsh square blocks.

However, before you get your hands dirty with brutalism, it is recommended that you take into account your target audience.

Animations is the new norm

In 2018, animation is the new norm in the web design space which allows you to translate information in a more efficient way. Moreover, you can drive attention by telling a story within a few seconds. Therefore, you can better engage your customers by animating backgrounds, logos, menus and more.

You would get to see that almost everything is in motion; however, you won’t get distracted. As your site visitors scroll through your site, they will find that the information is not presented for their approval but rather for their awareness by catching attention piece by piece.

If web development experts create animation in a proper manner then a subtle one can also drive users’ attention to the right content at the right time on your site. Thus, animations ensure that site visitors do not miss out on the conversion-driving forms, CTA buttons or copy.

Conclusion

Hey, hope you had an interesting read! Well, to be honest, compiling these trends in a list wasn’t that easy as we had to leave out some obvious forces like AR and VR which will continue to impact design space.

If your views are different than ours regarding what would 2018 hold for web design, then please feel free to initiate a healthy discussion. Please be the first to leave your comments below; we would love to hear from you.

New Year is a great time to make a fresh start and to make resolutions as well as an action plan to stick with the same. Shifting our focus to the web design space, it is also the right time to ponder which trends will dominate, as we have already begun 2018.

We can foresee that this year is going to be exciting as well as innovative. Here’s what a web design and development company must keep an eye on in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Leverage diversity and inclusion for

creativity

Thinking out of the box is an imperative to keep ahead of the game and gain competitive advantage. This is solely possible when you have a diverse team rather than a homogeneous team.

Creativity is all about seeing things in different ways! And this is possible only if you have people from different backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. If your team has people from same country and same age then they won’t be able to explore multiple solutions from varied angles for the same problem. They would rather tend to bring the same ideas and solutions to the table.

Hence, in 2018 we would get to see a more diverse and inclusive design team to come out with more innovative and experimental designs.

Focus on understanding target audience

It has always been very important for businesses to understand the end user; however not every business is putting the same amount of effort to conduct user research or interviews in order to fully understand their target audience. We have observed this trend last year too and expect it to ubiquitous in 2018.

You can learn a lot by talking to the target audience – you can find out their pain points and also know what interests them more and so on.

Videos and fluid shapes with gradients

will rule

This year get ready to see the increased use of videos throughout websites as they can deliver lot of information rapidly and visually. Rather than witnessing a typical video in the home page, expect to see them in multiple areas of websites. Videos are not fast becoming a media of brands’ communication and presentation.

Last year, you would have seen generous use of material kinds of shapes and shadows. But this year web design agencies are shifting towards utilizing fluid shapes with gradients. In addition to that lots of white space will be used with large but mild shadows.

Over-sized typography, animated CSS, use of gradients and fluid shapes will become common practice; keeping an eye on the latest UI trends would be beneficial for your web development investment.

Establishing consistency

As a designer you can play a pivotal role in helping businesses maintain consistency in branding which in turn can help increase customer loyalty. For instance, a business must put efforts in maintaining consistency across all the channels, like mobile app and social media for instance.

To you it might appear that a mobile app and social media platforms are different things, however both the channels are facing customers hence need to maintain the same brand message. You must consider the same tone for the company message, uniformity in the language and visuals used so that the branding message resonates bold and loud.

Long-form content with immersive

multimedia

This year long-form content will rule, however, if you are thinking to just throw a long text onto the web page then we are afraid you won’t go far. Rather you have to focus on the concept of feature stories, that is, combine custom layouts with content copy in such a manner that your lengthy stories are enriched with images, charts, graphs, maps, video and other immersive multimedia.

This is not a new trend, to be frank; however, it could be called a milestone of the years long discussion around content publishing in web. Keeping in mind all the tools available for web publishing, we think this trend would get optimal emphasis in 2018.

Brutalism becomes mainstream

Last year you must have witnessed the rise of brutalism despite the fact that this design style is very harsh. Designers can do whatever they want rather than what they should do. The design work usually abstains from the best practices and all the optimization tips at times to create a shocking look.

To your surprise, you can expect more businesses to jump on the brutal bandwagon this year.

Brutalism is a back-to-basics style which is derived from the French phrase for raw or raw concrete. You can take inspiration from the architecture of the concrete era of 1950s to 70s – immovable grey buildings comprising of harsh square blocks.

However, before you get your hands dirty with brutalism, it is recommended that you take into account your target audience.

Animations is the new norm

In 2018, animation is the new norm in the web design space which allows you to translate information in a more efficient way. Moreover, you can drive attention by telling a story within a few seconds. Therefore, you can better engage your customers by animating backgrounds, logos, menus and more.

You would get to see that almost everything is in motion; however, you won’t get distracted. As your site visitors scroll through your site, they will find that the information is not presented for their approval but rather for their awareness by catching attention piece by piece.

If web development experts create animation in a proper manner then a subtle one can also drive users’ attention to the right content at the right time on your site. Thus, animations ensure that site visitors do not miss out on the conversion-driving forms, CTA buttons or copy.

Conclusion

Hey, hope you had an interesting read! Well, to be honest, compiling these trends in a list wasn’t that easy as we had to leave out some obvious forces like AR and VR which will continue to impact design space.

If your views are different than ours regarding what would 2018 hold for web design, then please feel free to initiate a healthy discussion. Please be the first to leave your comments below; we would love to hear from you.